Overview

Synopsis

At long, long last, 30-year-old Charlie Salinger (Matthew Fox), legal guardian of his four younger siblings, has tied the matrimonial knot with his erstwhile sweetheart Kirsten Bennett (Paula Devicq), who had come into the lives of the Salingers when she was hired as nanny for the younger children during Season One of Party of Five. By the time that the series' sixth and final season has run its course, Charlie and Kirsten will have become parents. Alas, the relationship between Charlie's 21-year-old brother Bailey (Scott Wolf) and his live-in girlfriend Sarah Reeves is a thing of the past--principally because actress Jennifer Love Hewitt) has transferred her characterization of Sarah to the spinoff series Time of Your Life. Nor is this the end of Bailey's woes; having hired his late dad's former partner Joe Magnus (Tom Mason) to manage the family's San Francisco restaurant, Bailey has his trust betrayed when Joe embezzles the profits and plunges the establishment into financial ruin. With all these setbacks, Bailey returns to his drinking habit--big time! In another development, 20-year-old Julia Salinger (Neve Campbell) is studying for a literary career at CalArts, while her marriage to Griffin (Jeremy London) further disintegrates. Suddenly, Julia's high school sweetheart Justin Thompson (Michael Goorjian), who hasn't been seen since Season Three, returns to San Francisco, reeling from an unhappy marriage of his own. Inevitably, Julia and Justin rediscover one another, and the old romantic spark roars back into flame. Elsewhere, Bailey's lifelong buddy Will (Scott McCorkle), who'd once gone steady with the departed Sarah, lands a good job in sports management; and the redoubtable Daphne Jablonski (Jennifer Aspen), the mother of Charlie's daughter Natalie, finds work at a strip club--and also finds time to begin an affair with Julia's hubby Griffin; and 16-year-old Claudia Salinger (Lacey Chabert) is able to graduate from high school a year early and fulfill her life's dream of enrolling at Julliard. As the series winds down, Bailey sells the family restaurant to finance Charlie's purchase of his own furniture business, and at the same time goes "cold turkey" and re-enrolls in college. And perhaps inevitably, Charlie decides that it is time to move his family out of their familiar lodgings and into more economical digs, thereby setting up the opportunity for extended flashbacks to the Salinger's fondest memories of the past six years. ~ Hal Erickson